Contrarian opinion: What exactly is the point of "fast" internet?
Most people use the internet for entertainment, people can survive watching Netflix at 1080p/720p, it isn't debilitating.
If I'm wrong in my assessment, give me use cases where you require fast internet in a rural area.
If the question is cost, I don't see how laying fiber and equipment for hundreds, if not, thousands of miles is a solution to reducing cost (unless it's subsidized by the government).
Spending billions on mostly "entertainment" is a waste.
> Most people use the internet for entertainment, people can survive watching Netflix at 1080p/720p, it isn't debilitating. If I'm wrong in my assessment, give me use cases where you require fast internet in a rural area.
Lots of desire for more automation and data surrounding agriculture, for starters.
More generally, people work through internet applications. If you want to check your email, type up a document, have Zoom calls, etc., you need to do so through the internet. If you don't have fast internet, you can count on being less productive.
That still would be faster than dialup, older generations of satellite internet, and some tiers of DSL service can provide, and there are still areas where those are the options.
2. How large is each "diagnostic medical image"? I can't imagine this being in the order of TB
a. An existing 5G/LTE or satellite internet is perfectly serviceable for even GBs of medical images
b. Let's assume the images are in the order of TBs, does this justify spending billions for one person (or tens) in a "rural" area?
People were perfectly fine with 56k when most of the Internet was just text. Stalling the internet at that speed could have been argued for by saying anyone who wants DSL/Cable at home just wants it for Napster.
Fast Internet speeds allow for unthought of innovations. If we get up to terabyte speeds, maybe nobody cares about watching Netflix if we can now have holodecks that become fully immersible experiences that allow for educational training and, to your chagrin, entertainment as well. Maybe LLMs are basically free because everyone can just have all of human content constantly updated.
Letting speeds stall stifles innovation and let's Netflix just continually up their prices for the same 720p content you refer to.
> maybe nobody cares about watching Netflix if we can now have holodecks that become fully immersible experiences that allow for educational training and, to your chagrin, entertainment as well
I don't see why billions of dollars should be spent, for say, less than a low single digit percentage of the rural population who want to stick a machine to their head for educational training.
It's infinitely cheaper, a more sane and healthier decision to move to the location where they can sit in front of the instructor, if they value this education.
If we're going full reductio ad absurdum and taking snipes instead of conversation, then maybe the appropriate response is: You can be poor all you want, but don't expect someone else to subsidize your life.
My comment isn't really that absurd in the context of this whole thread and its insistence that decent quality internet service is something only the wealthy and/or those who live in urban areas should have access to.
There are tons of Youtube channels and Reddit threads dedicated to clones.
My protocol is, if the originals sell at outrageous prices, I go for clones. They are good enough for me.
Doesn't matter what his ethnicity is, if he doesn't produce (whatever that definition is: stock price, technology output, new market etc.) he'll be kicked out. At the CEO level, nepotism does not work (unless he has a golden parachute, does he?). Why the hell will he hire his "buddies" who are not productive?
So comparing him to low-mid level Indian managers who are fighting over scraps is comparing apples to oranges.
Yeah right. I was in Beijing last week, how in the world is China ranked alongside India in terms of English proficiency? I could hardly find anyone even at the Beijing Capital airport to speak a coherent English sentence, let alone grammatically correct.
Finally common sense prevails!
Get to work on time, eat your free lunch, work, go home.
To those of you who disagree; if you want to "make a difference" take a cue from Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther king Jr. etc. Mahama Gandhi didn't work for the East India company while simultaneously fighting for freedom.
If you are serious about it put your money where your mouth is and stop being empty vessels.
> Mahama Gandhi didn't work for the East India company while simultaneously fighting for freedom.
LOL!
I worked at Google for about two years as a "TVC" (a programmer in a cubical, not a "real" Googler) and it was like being kidnapped by aliens, after I left that's how it felt: Like I was one of those people who had just been returned to Earth.
One thing that doesn't get talked about in re: Google and values: there's an entire "underclass" of employees that are of definite inferior status. The janitors, re-stockers of cafes, and maintenance people, etc. They wear special uniforms, and are trained not to fraternize with the "real" Googlers. They don't get to ride the fancy buses to and from work.
They are also of a different racial mix. Googlers are generally white or Asian but the staff are generally Hispanic. So there's politics, and then there's politics...
This is arguably because of ERISA and Google's decision to make their 401(k) plan highly optimized for software developers. ERISA says that you have to offer the same 401(k) to all employees and that it has to meet fairness criteria for "highly compensated" employees, but it doesn't say what labor inputs have to be provided by employees vs contractors.
Maybe, but if you loudly espouse progressive values as Googlers seem to do more than most tech workers, maybe you should put some of those values into practice, and actually make a real effort to integrate those contractors into the group?
Is this in California? I've noticed in California that food service workers (at any establishment) tend to be Hispanic. In Toronto, they tend to be Asian.
Since these companies are required to be race-blind when hiring, they are going to be a reflection of their local job markets.
if you want to "make a difference" take a cue from Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther king Jr. etc
To elaborate the examples/options:
1) Become a lawyer -- Real change can be enacted through legislation and litigation. Knowing how the law works is power in this context.
2) Be involved in politics -- Again, real change can be enacted through legislation. This doesn't just mean running for office. One of my ex-girlfriends' step-fathers worked at a juvenile halfway house, and he regularly acted as an unpaid lobbyist. I have another friend who has also acted as an unpaid lobbyist for environmental causes. Anyone can do it. It's just a matter of being articulate, preparing, and having the time. (Also, everyone knows that lots of paid lobbyists are basically like mercenaries, so if your sincerity comes through and you know your stuff, there will be people open to your alternative take.)
3) Public speaking and writing -- All of the above did that.
Also, with regards to 2 and 3, do this in the larger community, outside of your workplace. This makes your activism a pull for people, instead of a push. Just imagine if people of _political_party_you_dont_like_ started to get involved in committees at your job and started to foist their particular beliefs on you there in the form of policies. It's not a big stretch to see how that could be interpreted as a subtle form of political attack, through the sensitive area of one's livelihood. It's easy to see how that can close minds, where otherwise there might have been a chance to convince, instead of coerce.
This brings me to number 4:
4) Convince. Don't coerce. -- In particular, in the startup community, we should know that getting people to pull can work much better than a push, which can even elicit a backlash.
As an aside, I came to Gandhi's views on nationalism while living in Indonesia. Gandhi was a genius there and his views on the rightful place of nationalism have shaped a continent for the better.
This insistence on purity seems kind of naive and unsympathetic. I assume real history is more complicated. Do you really think there weren't blacks fighting for civil rights while working for racists?
But I'm pretty certain most, if not all, African Americans who worked for racists were fired if they found out that they were part of the civil rights movement.
As Jordan Peterson says, clean up your room before you go fixing the world. Go up from Shoreline towards 101 and see the number of homeless people; what exactly are these enlightened Googlers doing for them other than ignoring them and driving away with their expensive Maserati's, Tesla's etc. and complaining about how expensive it is to live in the bay area. How about NIMBY laws? The list goes on and on..
I have a feeling that many of the activists who were just protesters alongside those big names didn't quit their jobs to pursue of lifetime of pure activism. I'm not sure why having a job precludes you from being political.
> Mahama Gandhi didn't work for the East India company while simultaneously fighting for freedom.
Given that the East India Company was dissolved when he was 5, this would've been difficult.[1][2]
He did however work in the ambulance corps for the British Army in the Boer War. And advocated for cooperation with the British government in WW1 right up until the Jalianwala Bagh massacre.[3]
The East India Company analogy doesn't fit. Google doesn't have a private army to subjugate the countries it trades with. Gandhi working at some other company might be a better fit, but even that isn't a good analogy. A lot of these people don't see themselves as Gandhis, Kings, Mandelas, etc. but only as their followers, who did have regular day jobs.
At workplaces without civility, jerks are often rewarded if they deliver results, and management tolerates them because they make them look good. OTOH, not separating out punishment of the brilliance from the jerk is an equally-damaging lack of nuance.
You're talking as if most, if not all, companies are engaging in R&D at the level of the Apollo 11 space mission. You don't need brilliant people in most cases, merely having honest, diligent, persistent normal human beings can get the job done.
Yes and no. There is a stark difference between Texas and California (I've lived in both states).
Here's a recent story shared by a friend who moved from CA to TX: He took his son (who are Indians) and another bunch of kids, two were Indians and the rest white to a water park in Austin. One of the Indian kids cut the line and moved to the front of the line where my friend was. He asked him why did he do that and he should not cut the line; the Indian kid responded "We are Indians and we need to stick together". This is in the so called liberal oasis of Austin.
I doubt if this frequent in the Bay area; sure you can point to PC culture and all that but this story is a sobering reminder of how segregated Texas espcially when you have kids acting like this.
Most people use the internet for entertainment, people can survive watching Netflix at 1080p/720p, it isn't debilitating. If I'm wrong in my assessment, give me use cases where you require fast internet in a rural area.
If the question is cost, I don't see how laying fiber and equipment for hundreds, if not, thousands of miles is a solution to reducing cost (unless it's subsidized by the government).
Spending billions on mostly "entertainment" is a waste.
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